I always wondered: "Russia is the largest country geographically in the world. As land is unlimited, there should be no place for poverty or lack of liberty. If a person is poor and unhappy, he could go to some nook and corner of the vast waste land and live cultivating a small bit for his minimum needs. An armed revolution by the "Poor" is possible only when they are extremely desperate and in a irretrievable condition without an armed revolt. The 1917 Bolshevik revolution, therefore, surprised me. While going through the works of Swami Vivekananda, his memoirs of European travel I found the hopeless state of poverty prevailing in Russia of around 1900. Vivekananda noted that poor in Russia would place a lump of sugar in the mouth and allow tea to pass over it and after finishing drinking tea, he will pass on the lump to another person for repeating the process.
The Bolshevik revolution and the Communism seemed to do wonders for the Russian poor through "equalisers". In the last decade of the 20th Century, the dream broke. The condition of poor in today's Russia is not known. Have they resumed the passing on of sugar lumps to others and recycling it, while drinking tea?
No comments:
Post a Comment